My springtail colony crashed because of a moss I picked up

Last month I added some wild moss from a park near Portland to my new build and within a week my springtails were gone. Turns out that moss had some kind of mite that ate the springtail eggs, I lost a whole 2 month old culture. Anyone else had a clean-up crew wipeout from unsterilized materials, or do you just bake everything before it goes in?

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ninaross23d ago

Remember reading on another forum that someone swore by freezing wild moss for two weeks before using it, said it killed everything without nuking the good stuff. I've also heard boiling water works but that can break down the moss structure pretty fast. Whatever you do, it sounds like you need to treat anything from outside as if it's carrying something, because that's a tough lesson to learn the hard way.